A POETICS OF ANTICOLONIALISM - Shifter Magazine...28 A POETICS OF ANTICOLONIALISM of incarceration, exiling, snuffing out artists and intellectuals who dare to imagine a radically

28 A POETICS OF ANTICOLONIALISM

of incarceration, exiling, snuffing out artists and intellectuals who

dare to imagine a radically different way ofliving, who dare to invent

the marvelous before our very eyes.

In the end, Discourse was never intended to be a road map or a

blueprint for revolution. It is poetry and therefore revolt. It is an act

of insurrection, drawn from Cesaire's own miraculous weapons,

molded and shaped by his work with Tropiques and its challenge to

the Vichy regime; by his imbibing ofEuropean culture and his sense

of alienation from both France and his native land. It is a rising, a

blow to the master who appears as owner and ruler, teacher and

comrade. It is revolutionary graffiti painted in bold strokes across

the great texts ofWestern Civilization; it is a hand grenade tossed

with deadly accuracy, dearing the field so that we might write a new

history with what's left standing. Discourse is hardly a dead docu

ment about a dead order. If anything, it is a call for us to plumb the

depths ofthe imagination for a different way forward. Just as Cesaire

drew on Lautn:!amont's Chants de Maldoror to illuminate the can

nibalistic nature of capitalism and the power of poetic knowledge,

Discourse offers new insights into the consequences of colonialism

and a model for dreaming a way out ofour postcolonial predicament.

While we still need to overthrow all vestiges ofthe old colonial order,

destroying the old is just half the battle.

DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM

Aime Cesaire

Translated by Joan Pinkham

DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM

by Aime Cesaire

A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it

creates is a decadent civilization.

A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial

problems is a stricken civilization.

A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a

dying civilization.

The fact is that the so-called European civilization-"Western"

civilization-as it has been shaped by two centuries of bourgeois

rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its

existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the

colonial problem; that Europe is unable to justifY itself either before

the bar of "reason" or before the bar of "conscience"; and that,

increasingly, it takes refuge in a hypocrisy which is all the more

odious because it is less and less likely to deceive.

31

32 DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM

Europe is indefensible. Apparently that is what the American strategists are whispering

to each other.

That in itself is not serious.

What is serious is that "Europe" is morally, spiritually indefen

sible.

And today the indictment is brought against it not by the

European masses alone, but on a world scale, by tens and tens of

millions ofmen who, from the depths ofslavery, set themselves up

as judges. The colonialists may kill in Indochina, torture in Madagascar,

imprison in Black Africa, crack down in the West Indies. Hence

forth the colonized know that they have an advantage over them.

They know that their temporary "masters" are lying. Therefore that their masters are weak.

And since I have been asked to speak about colonization and civilization, let us go straight to the principal lie that is the source

of all the others. Colonization and civilization?

In dealing with this subject, the commonest curse is to be the dupe in good faith of a collective hypocrisy that cleverly misrepresents

problems, the better to legitimize the hateful solutions provided for them.

In other words, the essential thing here is to see clearly, to think

clearly-that is, dangerously-and to answer clearly the innocent first question: what, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on

what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise,

nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor

an attempt to extend the rule of law. To admit once and for all,

AIME CESAIRE 33

without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here

are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and

behind them, the baleful projected shadow ofa form ofcivilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for

internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its

antagonistic economies. Pursuing my analysis, I find that hypocrisy is ofrecent date; that

neither Cortez discovering Mexico from the top ofthe great teocalli, nor Pizzaro before Cuzco (much less Marco Polo before Cambuluc),

claims that he is the harbinger ofa superior order; that they kill; that they plunder; that they have helmets, lances, cupidities; that the

slavering apologists came later; that the chief culprit in this domain

is Christian pedantry, which laid down the dishonest equations

Christianity =civilization, paganism savagery, from which there could not but ensue abominable colonialist and racist consequences, whose

victims were to be the Indians, the Yellow peoples, and the Negroes.

That being settled, I admit that it is a good thing to place iEi different civilizations in contact with each other; that it is an

excellent thing to blend different worlds; that whatever its own

particular genius may be, a civilization that withdraws into itself

atrophies; that for civilizations, exchange is oxygen; that the great good fortune ofEurope is to have been a ctossroads, and that because it was the locus of all ideas, the receptacle of all philosophies, the

meeting place of all sentiments, it was the best center for the

redistribution ofenergy. But then I ask the following question: has colonization really

placed civilizations in contact? Or, if you prefer, of all the ways of

establishing contact, was it the best?

I answer no.

~ I I


And I say that between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all the ministries, there could not come a single human value.

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the

colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense ofthe word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time

a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a

universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these pris

oners who have been tied up and "interrogated," all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has

been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a

35


poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but

surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery. And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific

boomerangeffect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons flll up, the torturers

standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How

strange! But never mind-it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait,

and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is

barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that

sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that

before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they

tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they

absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then,

it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have

cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that

before engulfing the whole edifice ofWestern, Christian civilization

in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

Yes, itwould beworthwhile to srudy clinically, in detail, the steps

taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distin

guished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois ofthe twentieth

century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside

him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he

rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what

he cannot forgive Hitler for is not the crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation ofman as such, it is the crime against

the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that

he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had

been reserved exclusively for the Arabs ofAlgeria, the "coolies" of

India, and the "niggers" ofMrica.

AIME CESAIRE 37

And that is the great thing I hold against pseudo-humanism:

that ror toO long it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept

ofthose rights has been-and still is-narrow and fragmentary, incom

plete and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist. I have talked a good deal about Hitler. Because he deserves it:

he makes it possible to see things on a large scale and to grasp the

fact that capitalist society, at its present stage, is incapable of

establishing a concept of the rights of all men, just as it has proved

incapable of establishing a system of individual ethics. Whether one

likes it or not, at the end of the blind alley that is Europe, I mean the

Europe ofAdenauer, Schuman, Bidault, and a few others, there is

Hitler. At the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day,

there is Hitler. At the end of formal humanism and philosophic

renunciation, there is Hitler. And this being so, I cannot help thinking of one of his state

ments: "We aspire not to equality but to domination. The country

of a foreign race must become once again a country of serfs, of

agricultural laborers, or industrial workers. It is not a question of

eliminating the inequalities among men but ofwidening them and

making them into a law." That rings clear, haughty, and brutal, and plants us squarely in

the middle ofhowling savagery. But let us come down a step. Who is speaking? I am ashamed to say it: it is the Western

humanist, the "idealist" philosopher. That his name is Renan is an

accident. That the passage is taken from a book entitled La Riforme intellectuelle et morale, that it was written in France just after a war

which France had represented as a war of right against might, tells

us a great deal about bourgeois morals.


The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races by the

superior races is part ofthe providential order ofthings for humanity.

With us, the common man is nearly always a declasse nobleman, his

heavy hand is better suited to handling the sword than the menial

tool. Rather than work, he chooses to fight, that is, he returns to his

first estate. Regere imperiopopulos, that is our vocation. Pour forth

all-consuming activity onto countries which, like China, are ctying

aloud for foreign conquest. Turn the adventurers who disturb Euro

pean society into a ver sacrum, a horde like those of the Franks, the

Lombards, or the Normans, and every man will be in his right role.

Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have

wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor; govern

them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of

such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and

they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat

with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of

masters and soldiers, the European race. Reduce this noble race to

working in the ergastulum like Negroes and Chinese, and they rebel.

In Europe, every rebel is, more or less, a soldier who has missed his

calling, a creature made for the heroic before whom you are

setting a task that is contrary to his race, a poor worker, too good a

soldier. But the life at which our workers rebel would make a Chinese

or a fellah happy, as they are not military creatures in the least. Let each one do what he is made for, and all will be well.

Hitler? Rosenberg? No, Renan. But let us come down one step further. And it is the long

winded politician. Who protests? No one, so far as I know, when

M. Albert Sarraut, the former governor-general of Indochina,

holding forth to the students at the Ecole Coloniale, teaches them that it would be puerile to object to the European colonial enterprises in the name of "an alleged right to possess the land

____ ~~ '1$"1/ tttl

AIME CESAJRE 39

one occupies, and some sort ofright to remain in fierce isolation,

which would leave unutilized resources to lie forever idle in the

hands of incompetents." And who is roused to indignation when a certain Rev. Barde

assures us that if the goods of this world "remained divided up indefinitely, as they would be without colonization, they would

answer neither the purposes of God nor the just demands of the

human collectivity"? Since, as his fellow Christian, the Rev. Muller, declares: "Hu

manity must not, cannot allow the incompetence, negligence, and

laziness of the uncivilized peoples to leave idle indefinitely the wealth which God has confided to them, charging them to make it

serve the good of all." No one. I mean not one established writer, not one academic, not one

preacher, not one crusader for the right and for religion, not one

"defender of the human person." And yet, through the mouths ofthe Sarrauts and the Bardes, the

Mullers and the Renans, through the mouths of all those who considered-and consider-it lawful to apply to non-European peoples "a kind ofexpropriation for public purposes" for the benefit

of nations that were stronger and better equipped, it was already

Hitler speaking! What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes

innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation

which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization

and therefore force-is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean

its punishment.


Colonization: bridgehead in a campaign to civilize barbarism,

from which there may emerge at any moment the negation of

civilization, pure and simple.

Elsewhere I have cited at length a few incidents culled from the

history of colonial expeditions.

Unfortunately, this did not find favor with everyone. It seems

that I was pulling old skeletons out of the doset. Indeed!

Was there no point in quoting Colonel de Montagnac, one of

the conquerors of Algeria: "In order to banish the thoughts that

sometimes besiege me, I have some heads cut off, not the heads of artichokes but the heads of men."

Would it have been more advisable to refuse the floor to Count

d'Herisson: "It is true that we are bringing back a whole barrelful

of ears collected, pair by pair, from prisoners, friendly or enemy."

Should I have denied Saint-Arnaud the right to profess his

barbarous faith: "We lay waste, we burn, we plunder, we destroy the houses and the trees."

Should 1 have prevented Marshal Bugeaud from systematizing

all that in a daring theory and invoking the precedent of famous

ancestors: "We must have a great invasion of Mrica, like the invasions of the Franks and the Goths."

Lasdy, should 1 have cast back into the shadows of oblivion the

memorable feat ofarms of General Gerard and kept silent about the

capture ofAmbike, a city which, to tell the truth, had never dreamed

of defending itself. "The native riflemen had orders to kill only the

men, but no one restrained them; intoxicated by the smell of blood,

they spared not one woman, not one child. . . . At the end of the

afternoon, the heat caused a light mist to arise: it was the blood of

the five thousand victims, the ghost of the city, evaporating in the .settmg sun. "

-----_._.._-_._._-----"--- -- -----"------.~..

AIME CESAJRE 41

Yes or no, are these things true? And the sadistic pleasures, the

nameless delights that send volupruous shivers and quivers through

Loti's carcass when he focuses his field glasses on a good massacre

of the Annamese? True or not true? And if these things are true, as

no one can deny, will it be said, in order to minimize them, that

these corpses don't prove anything? For my part, if 1 have recalled a few details of these hideous

butcheries, it is by no means because I take a morbid delight in them,

but because I think that these heads ofmen, these collections ofears,

these burned houses, these Gothic invasions, this steaming blood,

these cities that evaporate at the edge of the sword, are not to be so

easily disposed o£ They prove that colonization, I repeat, dehuman

even the most civilized man; that colonial activity, colonial

enterprise, colonial conquest, which is based on contempt for the

native and justified by that contempt, inevitably tends to change

him who undertakes it; that the colonizer, who in order to ease his

conscience gets into the habit ofseeing the other man as an animal accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively

to transform himse!finto an animal. It is this result, this boomerang

effect of colonization that I wanted to point out. Unfair? No. There was a time when these same facts were a

source ofpride, and when, sure ofthe morrow, people did not mince

words. One last quotation; it is from a certain Carl Siger, author of

an Essai sur fa colonisation (Paris, 1907):

The new countries offer a vast field for individual, violent activi

ties which, in the metropolitan countries, would run up against

certain prejudices, against a sober and orderly conception oflife, and

in the colonies, have greater freedom to develop and, conse

to affirm their worth. Thus to a certain extent the colonies

42 DISCOURSE ON COLONIALlSM

can serve as a safety valve for modern society. Even if this were their

only value, it would be immense.

Truly, there are sins for which no one has the power to make amends and which can never be fully expiated.

But let us speak about the colonized.

I see clearly what colonization has destroyed: the wonderful Indian civilizations--and neither Deterding nor Royal Dutch nor

Standard Oil will ever console me for the Aztecs and the Incas.

I see clearly the civilizations, condemned to perish at a future date,

into which it has introduced a principle ofruin: the South Sea Islands,

Nigeria, Nyasaland. I see less clearly the contributions it has made.

Security? Culture? The rule of law? In the meantime, I look

around and wherever there are colonizers and colonized face to face, I see force, brutality, cruelty, sadism, conflict, and, in a parody of

education, the hasty manufacture of a few thousand subordinate

functionaries, "boys," artisans, office clerks, and interpreters necessary for the smooth operation of business.

I spoke of contact.

Between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, rape, com

pulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses.

No human contact, but relations ofdomination and submission which turn the colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army

sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument ofproduction.

My turn to state an equation: colonization = "thingification."

I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, about "achievements," diseases cured, improved standards of living.

AIME CESAIRE 43

J am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures

trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated,

religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.

They throw facts at my head, statistics, mileages ofroads, canals,

and railroad tracks.

J am talking about thousands of men sacrificed to the Congo

Ocean? I am talking about those who, as I write this, are digging

the harbor ofAbidjan by hand. I am talking about millions of men

torn from their gods, their land, their habits, their life-from life,

from the dance, from wisdom.

J am talking about millions of men in whom fear has been

cunningly instilled, who have been taught to have an inferiority

complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys.

They dazzle me with the tonnage ofcotton or cocoa that has been

exported, the acreage that has been planted with olive trees or grapevmes.

J am talking about natural economies that have been disrupted

harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous popu

lation--about food crops destroyed, malnutrition permanently

introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the

benefit ofthe metropolitan countries; about the looting ofproducts, the looting of raw materials.

They pride themselves on abuses eliminated.

I too talk about abuses, but what I say is that on the old

ones-very real-they have superimposed others--very detestable.

They talk to me about local tyrants brought to reason; but I note

that in general the old tyrants get on very well with the new ones, and that there has been established between them, to the detriment

of the people, a circuit of mutual services and complicity.


They talk to me about civilization, I talk about proletarianization and mystification.

For my part, I make a systematic defense of the non-European civilizations.

Every day that passes, every denial of justice, every beating by

the police, every demand of the workers that is drowned in blood,

every scandal that is hushed up, every punitive expedition, every

police van, every gendarme and every militiaman, brings home to us the value ofour old societies.

They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few.

They were societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist.

They were democratic societies, always.

They were cooperative societies, fraternal societies.

I make a systematic defense of the societies destroyed by imperialism.

They were the fact, they did not pretend to be the idea; despite

faults, they were neither to be hated nor condemned. They

were content to be. In them, neither the word flilure nor the word avatar had any meaning. They kept hope intact.

Whereas those are the only words that can, in all honesry, be

applied to the European enterprises outside Europe. My only

consolation is that periods of colonization pass, that nations sleep only for a time, and that peoples remain.

This being said, it seems that in certain circles they pretend to

have discovered in me an "enemy of Europe" and a prophet of the return to the pre-European past.

For my part, I search in vain for the place where I could have

expressed such views; where I ever underestimated the importance

AIME CESAIRE 45

of Europe in the history of human thought; where I ever preached

a return ofany kind; where I ever claimed that there could be a return. The truth is that I have said something very different: to wit, that

the great historical tragedy ofAfrica has been not so much that it

was too late in making contact with the rest of the world, as the

manner in which that contact was brought about; that Europe began

to "propagate" at a time when it had fallen into the hands of the

most unscrupulous financiers and captains of industry; that it was

our misfortune to encounter that particular Europe on our path,

and that Europe is responsible before the human community for

the highest heap of corpses in history. In another connection, in judging colonization, I have added

Europe has gotten on very well indeed with all the local feudal

lords who agreed to serve, woven a villainous compliciry with them,

rendered their tyranny more effective and more efficient, and that

it has actually tended to prolong artificially the survival oflocal pasts

in their most pernicious aspects.

I have said-and this is something very different-that coloni

alist Europe has grafted modern abuse onto ancient injustice, hateful

racism onto old inequality.

That if I am attacked on the grounds of intent, I maintain that

colonialist Europe is dishonest in trying to justify its colonizing

activity a posteriori by the obvious material progress that has been

achieved in certain fields under the colonial regime-since sudden change is always possible, in history as elsewhere; since no one knows

at what stage of material development these same countries would

have been if Europe had not intervened; since the introduction of

technology into Africa and Asia, their administrative reorganization,

in a word, their "Europeanization," was (as is proved by the example

of Japan) in no way tied to the European occupation; since the


Europeanization of the non-European continents could have been

accomplished otherwise than under the heel of Europe; since this

movement of Europeanization was in progress; since it was even

slowed down; since in any case it was disrorted by the European

takeover.

The proofis that at present it is the indigenous peoples ofAfrica

and Asia who are demanding schools, and colonialist Europe which

refuses them; that it is the African who is asking for ports and roads,

and colonialist Europe which is niggardly on this score; that it is the

colonized man who wants to move forward, and the colonizer who

holds things back.

Togo further, I make no secret ofmy opinion that at the present

time the barbarism of Western Europe has reached an incredibly

high level, being only surpassed-far surpassed, it is true-by the

barbarism of the United States. And I am not talking about Hitler, or the prison guard, or the

advenrurer, but about the "decent fellow" across the way; not about

the member of the SS, or the gangster, but about the respectable

bourgeois. In a time gone by, Leon Bloy innocently became indig

nant over the fact that swindlers, perjurers, forgers, thieves,

procurers were given the responsibility of "bringing to the Indies

the example of Christian virtues." We've made progress: today it is the possessor of the "Christian

virtues" who intrigues-with no small success-for the honor of

administering overseas territories according to the methods of

forgers and torturers.

47


A sign that cruelty, mendacity, baseness, and corruption have

deep into the soul of the European bourgeoisie.

I repeat that I am not talking about Hitler, or the 55, or pogroms,

or summary executions. But about a reaction caught unawares, a

reflex permitted, a piece of cynicism tolerated. And if evidence is

wanted, I could mention a scene ofcannibalistic hysteria that I have

been privileged to witness in the French National Assembly.

By Jove, my dear colleagues (as they say), I take off my hat to you (a cannibal's hat, ofcourse).

of it! Ninety thousand dead in Madagascar! Indochina

trampled underfoot, crushed to bits, assassinated, tortures brought

back from the depths ofthe Middle Ages! And what a spectacle! The

delicious shudder that roused the dozing deputies. The wild uproar!

Bidault, looking like a communion wafer dipped in shit-unctuous

and sanctimonious cannibalism; Mouret-the cannibalism ofshady

deals and sonorous nonsense; Coste-Floret-the cannibalism of an

unlicked bear cub, a blundering fool.

Unforgettable, gentlemen! With fine phrases as cold and solemn

as a mummy's wrappings they tie up the Madagascan. With a few

conventional words they stab him for you. The time it takes to wet

your whistle, they disembowel him for you. Fine work! Not a drop

of blood will be wasted.

The ones who drink it straight, to the last drop. The ones

Ramadier, who smear their faces with it in the manner of 5ilenus;3

Fontlup-Esperaber, 4 who starches his mustache with it, the walrus

mustache of an ancient Gaul; old Desjardins bending over the

emanations from the vat and intoxicating himself with them as with

new wine. Violence! The violence of the weak. A significant thing:

it is not the head ofa civilization that begins to rot first. It is the heart.

AIME CESAIRE 49

I admit that as far as the health of Europe and civilization is

concerned, these cries of "Kill! kill!" and "Let's see some blood,"

belched forth by trembling old men and virtuous young men

educated by the Jesuit Fathers, make a much more disagreeable

impression on me than the most sensational bank holdups that

occur in Paris. And that, mind you, is by no means an exception.

On the contrary, bourgeois swinishness is the rule. We've been

on its trail for a century. We listen for it, we take it by surprise, we

sniff it out, we follow it, lose it, find it again, shadow it, and every

day it is more nauseatingly exposed. Oh! the racism of these

gentlemen does not bother me. I do not become indignant over

I merely examine it. I note it, and that is all. I am almost grateful to

it for expressing itself openly and appearing in broad daylight, as a sign. A sign that the intrepid class which once stormed the Bastilles

is now hamstrung. A sign that it feels itself to be mortal. A sign that

it feels itself to be a corpse. And when the corpse starts to babble,

you get this sort of thing:

There was too much truth in this first impulse of the

Europeans who, in the century ofColumbus, refosed to recognize as their

follow men the degraded inhabitants ofthe new world. ... One cannot

gaze upon the savage for an instant without reading the anathema

written, I do not say upon his soul alone, but even on the externalform

ofhis body.

And it's signed Joseph de Maistre.

(That's what is ground our by the mystical mill.)

And then you get this:

From the selectionist point of view, I would look upon it as

unfortunate if there should be a very great numerical expansion


the yellow and black elements, which would be difficult to eliminate.

However, if the society of the future is organized on a dualistic basis,

with a ruling class ofdolichocephalic blonds and a class ofinferior race

confined to the roughest labor, it is possible that this latter role would fall

to the yellow and black elements. In this case, moreover, they would

not be an inconvenience for the dolichocephalic blonds but an

advantage.... It must not beforgotten that [slavery] is no more abnormal

than the domestication ofthe horse or the ox. It is therefore possible that

it may reappear in the future in one form or another. It is probably

even inevitable that this will happen if the simplistic solution does

not come about instead-that of a single superior race, leveled out

by selection.

That's what is ground out by the scientific mill, and it's signed

Lapouge. And you also get this (from the literary mill this time):

I know that I must believe myself superior to the poor Bayas of

the Mambere. I know that I must takepride in my blood When a superior

man ceases to believe himself superior, he actually ceases to be

superior. ... When a superior race ceases to believe itself a chosen race,

it actually ceases to be a chosen race.

And it's signed Psichari-soldier-of-Mrica.

Translate it into newspaper jargon and you get Faguet:

The barbarian is of the same race, after all, as the Roman and the

Greek. He is a cousin. The yellow man, the black man, is not our

cousin at all. Here there is a real difference, a real distance, and a very

great one: an ethnological distance. After all, civilization has never yet

been made except by whites. ... If Europe becomes yellow, there will

certainly be a regression, a new period ofdarkness and confusion, that

is, another Middle Ages.

AIME CESAlRE 51

And then lower, always lower, to the bottom of the pit, lower

than the shovel can go, M. Jules Romains, ofthe Academie F ran<;:aise

and the Revue des Deux Mondes. (It doesn't matter, of course, that

M. Farigoule changes his name once again and here calls himself

5alsette for the sake ofconvenience.)5 The essential thing is that M.

Jules Romains goes so far as to write this:

I am willing to carry on a discussion only with people who agree

to pose the following hypothesis: a France that had on its metropoli

tan soil ten million Blacks, five or six million of them in the valley of

the Garonne. Would our valiant populations of the Southwest never

have been touched by race prejudice? Would there not have been the

slightest apprehension if the question had arisen ofturning all powers

over to these Negroes, the sons ofslaves? ... I once had opposite me

a row of some twenty pure Blacks .... I will not even censure our

Negroes and Negresses for chewing gum. I will only note ... that

this movement has the effect of emphasizing the jaws, and that the

associations which come to mind evoke the equatorial forest rather

than the procession of the Panathenaea .... The black race has not yet

produced, will never produce, an Einstein, a Stravinsky, a Gershwin.

One idiotic comparison for another: since the prophet of the

Revue des Deux Mondes and other places invites us to draw parallels

between "widely separated" things, may I be permitted, Negro that

I am, to think (no one being master ofhis free associations) that his

voice has less in common with the rustling of the oak ofDodona

or even the vibrations of the cauldron-than with the braying of a 6Missouri ass.

Once again, I systematically defend our old Negro civilizations:

they were courteous civilizations.

So the real problem, you say, is to return to them. No, I repeat.

We are not men for whom it is a question of"either-or." For us, the


problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the

past, but to go beyond. I t is not a dead society that we want to revive.

We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present

colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrion

that ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create,

with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the

productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of

olden days.

For some examples showing that this is possible, we can look to

the Soviet Union.

But let us return to M. Jules Romains:

One cannot say that the petty bourgeois has never read anything.

On the contrary, he has read everything, devoured everything.

Only, his brain functions after the fashion ofcertain elementary

types ofdigestive systems. It filters. And the filter lets through only

what can nourish the thick skin of the bourgeois's dear conscience.

Before the arrival ofthe French in their country, the Vietnamese

were people of an old culture, exquisite and refined. To recall this

fact upsets the digestion of the Banque d'Indochine. Start the

forgetting machine!

These Madagascans who are being tortured today, less than a

century ago were poets, artists, administrators? Shhhhhl Keep your

lips buttoned! And silence falls, silence as deep as a safe! Fortu

nately, there are still the Negroes. Ah! the Negroes! talk about

the Negroes!

All right, let's talk about them.

About the Sudanese empires? About the bronzes of Benin?

Shango sculpture? That's all right with me; it will us a change

from all the sensationally bad art that adorns so many European

capitals. About African music. Why not?

Al ME CESAIRE 53

And about what the first explorers said, what they saw .... Not

those who feed at the company mangers! But the d'Elbees, the

Marchais, the Pigafettas! And then Frobenius! Say, you know who

he was, Frobenius? And we read together: "Civilized to the marrow

of their bones! The idea of the barbaric Negro is a European • .» mvenuon.

The petty bourgeois doesn't want to hear any more. With a twitch ofhis ears he flicks the idea away.

The idea, an annoying fly.

Therefore, comrade, you will hold as enemies--Ioftily, lucidly,

consistently-not only sadistic governors and greedy bankers, not only prefects who torture and colonists who flog, not only corrupt,

check-licking politicians and subservient judges, but likewise and for the same reason, venomous journalists, goitrous academics,

wreathed in dollars and stupidity, ethnographers who go in for

metaphysics, presumptuous Belgian theologians, chattering intellectuals born stinking out ofthe thigh ofNietzsche, the paternalists,

the embracers, the corrupters, the back-slappers, the lovers of exoticism, the dividers, the agrarian sociologists, the hoodwinkers,

the hoaxers, the hot-air artists, the humbugs, and in general, all those

who, performing their functions in the sordid division of labor for

the defense ofWestern bourgeois society, try in diverse ways and by infamous diversions to split up the forces of Progress--even if it

means denying the very possibility ofProgress--all ofthem tools of

AI ME CESAIRE 55

capitalism, all of them, openly or secretly, supporters ofplundering

colonialism, all of them responsible, all hateful, all slave-traders, all

henceforth answerable for the violence of revolutionary action. And sweep out all the obscurers, all the inventors ofsubterfuges,

the charlatans and tricksters, the dealers in gobbledygook. And do

not seek to know whether personally these gentlemen are in good or bad faith, whether personally they have good or bad intentions.

Whether personally-that is, in the private conscience of Peter or

Paul--they are or are not colonialists, because the essential thing is

that their highly problematical subjective good faith is entirely

irrelevant to the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism.

And in this connection, I cite as examples (purposely taken from very different disciplines):

-From Gourou, his book Les Pays tropicaux, in which, amid

certain correct observations, there is expressed the fundamental biased and unacceptable, that there has never been a great

tropical civilization, that great civilizations have existed only in

temperate climates, that in every tropical country the germ of civilization comes, and can only come, from some other place

outside the tropics, and that if the tropical countries are not under

the biological curse of the racists, there at least hangs over them, with the same consequences, a no less effective geographical curse.

-From the Rev. Tempels, missionary and Belgian, his "Bantu

philosophy," as slimy and fetid as one could wish, but discovered very opportunely, as Hinduism was discovered by others, in order

to counteract the "communistic materialism" which, it seems, threatens to turn the Negroes into "moral vagabonds."

-From the historians or novelists of civilization (it's the same

thing)-not from this one or that one, but from all of them, or

-


almost all-their false objectivity, their chauvinism, their sly racism,

their depraved passion for refusing to acknowledge any merit in the

non-white races, especially the black-skinned races, their obsession

with monopolizing all glory for their own race.

-From the psychologists, sociologists et aL, their views on

"primitivism," their rigged investigations, their self-serving

alizations, their tendentious speculations, their insistence on the

marginal, "separate" character of the non-whites, and-although

each of these gentlemen, in order to impugn on higher authority

the weakness of primitive thought, claims that his own is based on

the firmest rationalism-their barbaric repudiation, for the sake of

the cause, ofDescartes's statement, the charter ofuniversalism, that

"reason ... is found whole and entire in each man," and that "where

individuals of the same species are concerned, there may be degrees

in respect of their accidental qualities, but not in of

forms, or natures."7

But let us not go too quickly. It is worthwhile to follow a few of

these gentlemen. I shall not dwell upon the case of the historians, neither the

historians of colonization nor the Egyptologists. The case of the

former is too obvious, and as for the latter, the mechanism by which

they delude their readers has been definitively taken apart by Sheikh

Anta Diop in his book Nations negres et culture, the most daring

book yet written by a Negro and one which

play an important part in the awakening ofMrica.8

Let us rather go back. ToM. Gourou, to be exact.

Need I say that it is from a lofty height that the eminent scholar

surveys the native populations, which "have taken no part" in the

development of modern science? And that it is not from the effort

of these populations, from their liberating struggle, from their

AIMf CfSAIRE 57

concrete fight for life, freedom, and culture that he expects the

salvation of the tropical countries to come, but from the good

colonizer-since the law states categorically that "it is cultural

elements developed in non-tropical regions which are ensuring and

ensure the progress of the tropical regions toward a larger

population and a higher civilization."

I have said that M. Gourou's book contains some correct obser

vations: "The tropical environment and the indigenous societies,"

he writes, drawing up the balance sheet on colonization, "have

suffered from the introduction of techniques that are ill adapted to

them, from corvees, porter service, forced labor, slavery, from the

transplanting ofworkers from one region to another, sudden changes

in the biological environment, and special new conditions that are less favorable."

A fine record! The look on the university rector's face! The look

on the cabinet minister's face when he reads that! Our Gourou has

slipped his leash; now we're in for it; he's going to tell everything;

he's beginning: "The typical hot countries find themselves faced

with the following dilemma: economic stagnation and protection

of the natives or temporary economic development and regression

of the natives." "Monsieur Gourou, this is very serious! I'm giving

you a solemn warning: in this game it is your career which is at

stake." So our Gourou chooses to back off and refrain from speci

fYing that, if the dilemma exists, it exists only within the framework

of the existing regime; that if this paradox constitutes an iron law,

it is only the iron law ofcolonialist capitalism, therefore ofa society

that is not only perishable but already in the process ofperishing.

What impure and worldly geography!

If there is anything better, it is the Rev. Tempels. Let them

plunder and torture in the Congo, let the Belgian colonizer seize all


the natural resources, let him stamp out all freedom, let him crush

all pride-let him go in peace, the Reverend Father T empeis

consents to all that. But take care! You are going to the Congo?

Respect-I do not say native property (the great Belgian companies

might take that as a dig at them), I do not say the freedom of the

natives (the Belgian colonists might think that was subversive talk),

I do not say the Congolese nation (the Belgian government might

take it much amiss)-I say: You are going to the Congo? Respect

the Bantu philosophy! "It would be really outrageous," writes the Rev. Tempels, "ifthe

white educator were to insist on destroying the black man's own,

particular human spirit, which is the only reality that prevents us

from considering him as an inferior being. It would be a crime

against humanity, on the part of the colonizer, to emancipate the

primitive races from that which is valid, from that which constitutes

a kernel of truth in their traditional thought, etc."

What generosity, Father! And what zeal! N ow then, know that Bantu thought is essentially ontological;

that Bantu ontology is based on the truly fundamental notions ofa

life force and a hierarchy of life forces; and that for the Bantu the

ontological order which defines the world comes from God and, as

a divine decree, must be respected.9

Wonderful! Everybody gains: the big companies, the colonists,

the government--everybody except the Bantu, naturally.

Since Bantu thought is ontological, the Bantu only ask for

satisfaction of an ontological nature. Decent wages! Comfortable

housing! Food! These Bantu are pure spirits, I tell you: "What they

desire first of all and above all is not the improvement of their

economic or material situation, but the white man's recognition of

and respect for their dignity as men, their full human value."

AI ME CESAIRE 59

In short, you tip your hat to the Bantu life force, you give a wink

to the immortal Bantu soul. And that's all it costs you! You have to

admit you're getting off cheap!

As for the government, why should it complain? Since, the Rev.

T empels notes with obvious satisfaction, "from their first contact with

the white men, the Bantu considered us from the only point ofview

that was possible to them, the point ofview oftheir Bantu philosophy"

and"integrated us into their hierarchy oflifoforces at a very high level" In other words, arrange it so that the white man, and particularly

the Belgian, and even more particularly Albert or Leopold, takes his

place at the head ofthe hierarchy of Bantu life forces, and you have done the trick. You will have brought this miracle to pass: the Bantu god will take responsibility for the Belgian colonialist order, and any Bantu who dares to raise his hand against it will be guilty ofsacrilege.

As for M. Mannoni, in view ofhis book and his observations on

the Madagascan soul, he deserves to be taken very seriously.

Follow him step by step through the ins and outs of his little

conjuring tricks, and he will prove to you as clear as day that

colonization is based on psychology, that there are in this world

groups of men who, for unknown reasons, suffer from what must

be called a dependency complex, that these groups are psychologi

cally made for dependence; that they need dependence, that they crave it, ask for it, demand it; that this is the case with most of the

colonized peoples and with the Madagascans in particular.

Away with racism! Away with colonialism! They smack too much

of barbarism. M. Mannoni has something better: psychoanalysis.

Embellished with existentialism, it gives astonishing results: the

most down-at-the-heel cliches are re-soled for you and made good

as new; the most absurd prejudices are explained and justified; and,

as if by magic, the moon is turned into green cheese.


But listen to him:

It is the destiny ofthe Occidental to face the obligation laid down

by the commandment Thou shalt leave thyfother and thy mother. This

obligation is incomprehensible to the Madagascan. At a given time

in his development, every European discovers in himself the desire.

.. to break the bonds of dependency, to become the equal of his

father. The Madagascan, never! He does not experience rivalry

the paternal authority, "manly protest," or Adlerian inferiority--ordeals

through which the European must pass and which are like civilized

forms ... of the initiation rites bv which one achieves manhood ...

Don't let the subtleties of vocabulary, the new terminology,

frighten you! You know the old refrain: "The-Negroes-are-big-chil

dren." They rake it, they dress it up for you, tangle it up for you.

The result is Mannoni. Once again, be reassured! At the start ofthe

journey it may seem a bit difficult, bur once you get there, you'll

see, you will find all your baggage again. Nothing will be missing, not even the famous white man s burden. Therefore, give ear:

"Through these ordeals" (reserved for the Occidental), "one tri

umphs over the infantile fear ofabandonment and acquires freedom and autonomy, which are the most precious possessions and also

the burdens of the Occidental." And the Madagascan? you ask A lying race ofbondsmen, Kipling

would say. M. Mannoni makes his diagnosis: "The Madagascan

does not even try to imagine such a situation of abandonment....

He desires neither personal autonomy nor free responsibility." (Come on, you know how it is. These Negroes can't even imagine

what freedom is. They don't want it, they don't demand it. It's the white agitators who put that into their heads. And if you gave it to

them, they wouldn't know what to do with

AIME CESAIRE 61

If you point out to M. Mannoni that the Madagascans have

nevertheless revolted several times since the French occupation and again recently in 1947, M. Mannoni, faithful to his premises, will

explain to you that that is purely neurotic behavior, a collective madness, a running amok; that, moreover, in this case it was not a

question of the Madagascans' setting out to conquer real objectives but an "imaginary security," which obviously implies that the

oppression ofwhich they complain is an imaginary oppression. So

clearly, so insanely imaginary, that one might even speak of

monstrous ingratitude, according to the classic example of

Fijian who burns the drying-shed of the captain who has cured him of his wounds.

If you criticize the colonialism that drives the most peaceable

populations to despair, M. Mannoni will explain to you that after the ones responsible are not the colonialist whites but the colo

nized Madagascans. Damn it all, they took the whites for gods and expected of them everything one expects of the divinity!

Ifyou think the treatment applied to the Madagascan neurosis

was a trifle tough, M. Mannoni, who has an answer for everything,

will prove to you that the famous brutalities people talk about have been very greatly exaggerated, that it is all neurotic fabrication, that the tortures were imaginary tortures applied by "imaginary executioners." As for the French government, it showed itself singularly

moderate, since it was content to arrest the Madagascan deputies,

when it should have sacrificed them, if it had wanted to respect the

laws of a healthy psychology.

I am not exaggerating. It is M. Mannoni speaking:

Treading very classical paths, these Madagascans transformed

their saints into martyrs, their saviors into scapegoats; they wanted to


wash their imaginary sins in the blood of their own gods. They were

prepared, even at this price, or rather only at thisprice, to reverse their

attitude once more. One feature ofthis dependent psychology would

seem to be that, since no one can serve two masters, one of the two

be sacrificed to the other. The most agitated of the colonialists

in Tananarive had a confused understanding of the essence of this

psychology ofsacrifice, and they demanded their victims. They besieged

the High Commissioner's office, assuring him that if they were

granted the blood of a few innocents, "everyone would be satisfied."

This attitude, disgraceful from a human point ofview, was based on

what was, on the whole, a fairly accurate perception ofthe emotional

disturbances that the population ofthe high plateaux was going through.

Obviously, it is only a step from this to absolving the bloodthirsty

colonialists. M. Mannoni's "psychology' is as "disinterested," as "free,"

as M. Gourou's geography or the Rev. T empels' missionary theology!

And the striking thing they all have in common is the persistent

bourgeois attempt to reduce the most human problems to comfort

able, hollow notions: the idea of the dependency complex in Man

noni, the ontological idea in the Rev. Tempels, the idea of"tropicality"

in Gourou. What has become of the Banque d'Indochine in all that?

And the Banque de Madagascar? And the bullwhip? And the taxes?

And the handful of rice to the Madagascan or the nhaque?lO And

the martyrs? And the innocent people murdered? And the blood

stained money piling up in your coffers, gentlemen? They have

evaporated! Disappeared, intermingled, become unrecognizable in

the realm of pale ratiocinations.

But there is one unfortunate thing for these gentlemen. It is that

their bourgeois masters are less and less responsive to a tricky

argument and are condemned increasingly to turn away from them

and applaud others who are less subtle and more brutal. That is

AIME CESAIRE 63

precisely what gives M. Yves Florenne a chance. And indeed, here,

neatly arranged on the tray ofthe newspaper Le Monde, are his little

offers ofservice. No possible surprises. Completely guaranteed, with

proven efficacy, fully tested with conclusive results, here we have a

form of racism, a French racism still not very sturdy, it is true, but

promising. Listen to the man himself:

"Our reader" (a teacher who has had the audacity to contradict

the irascible M. Florenne), " ... contemplating two young half-breed

girls, her pupils, has asense ofpride at thefeeling that there is agrowing measure ofintegration with ourFrenchfamily . ... Would her response

be the same if she saw, in reverse, France being integrated into the

black family (or the yellow or red, it makes no difference), that is to

say, becoming diluted, disappearing?"

It is clear that for M. Yves Florenne it is blood that makes France,

and the fuundations of the nation are biological: "Its people, its

genius, are made of a thousand-year-old equilibrium that is at the

same time vigorous and delicate, and ... certain alarming distur

bances of this equilibrium coincide with the massive and often

dangerous infusion of foreign blood which it has had to undergo

over the last thirty years."

short, cross-breeding-that is the enemy. No more social

crises! No more economic crises! All that is left are racial crises! Of

course, humanism loses none of its prestige (we are in the Western

world), but let us understand each other:

"It is not by losing itself in the human universe, with its blood

and its spirit, that France will be universal, it is by remaining itself."

That is what the French bourgeoisie has come to, five years after the

defeat of Hider! And it is precisely in that that its historic punish

ment lies: to be condemned, returning to it as though driven by a

vice, to chew over Hider's vomit.


Because after all, M. Yves Florenne was still fussing over peasant

novels, "dramas of the land," and stories of the evil eye when, with

a far more evil eye than the rustic hero of some tale of witchcraft,

Hitler was announcing: "The supreme goal of the People-State is

to preserve the original elements of the race which, by spreading

culture, create the beauty and dignity of a superior humanity."

M. Yves Florenne is aware of this direct descent.

And he is far from being embarrassed by it.

Fine. That's his right.

As it is not our right to be indignant about it.

Because, after all, we must resign ourselves to the inevitable and

say to ourselves, once and for all, that the bourgeoisie is condemned

to become evety day more snarling, more openly ferocious, more

shameless, more summarily barbarous; that it is an implacable law

that every decadent class finds itself turned into a receptacle

which there flow all the dirty waters ofhistoty; that it is a universal

law that before it disappears, every class must first disgrace itself

completely, on all fronts, and that it is with their heads buried in the

dunghill that dying societies utter their swan songs.

dossier is indeed overwhelming.

A beast that by the elementary exercise of its vitality spills blood

and sows death-you remember that historically it was in the form

of this fierce archetype that capitalist society first revealed itself to

the best minds and consciences.

Since then the animal has become anemic, it is losing its hair, its

hide is no longer glossy, but the ferocity has remained, barely mixed

with sadism. It is easy to blame it on Hitler. On Rosenberg. OnJlinger

and the others. On the 55.

But what about this: "Everything in this world reeks of crime:

the newspaper, the wall, the countenance of man."

Baudelaire said that, before Hitler was born!

Which proves that the evil has a deeper source. And Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautreamont! 11

65


In this connection, it is high time to dissipate the atmosphere of

scandal that has been created around the Chants de Maldoror.

Monstrosity? Literary meteorite? Delirium ofa sick imagination?

Come, now! How convenient it is!

The truth is that Lautreamont had only to look the iron man

forged by capitalist society squarely in the eye to perceive the

monster, the everyday monster, his hero.

No one denies the veracity of Balzac.

But wait a moment: take Vautrin, let him be just back from

tropics, give him the wings of the archangel and the shivers of

malaria, let him be accompanied through the streets of Paris by an

escort of Uruguayan vampires and carnivorous ants, and you will have Maldoror.12

The setting is changed, but it is the same world, the same man,

lflexible, unscrupulous, fond, ifever a man was, of"the flesh

ofother men."

To digress for a moment within my digression, I believe that

day will come when, with all the elements gathered together, all the

sources analyzed, all the circumstances of the work elucidated, it

will be possible to give the Chants de Maldoror a materialistic and

historical interpretation which will bring to light an altogether

unrecognized aspect of this frenzied epic, its implacable denuncia

of a very particular form of society, as it could not escape the

sharpest eyes around the 1865. Before that, ofcourse, we will have had to clear away the occultist

and metaphysical commentaries that obscure the path; to re-estab

lish the importance ofcertain neglected stanzas-for example, that

strangest passage ofall, the one concerning the mine oflice, in which

we will consent to see nothing more or less than the denunciation

of the evil power ofgold and the hoarding up of money; to restore

AIME CESAIRE 67

to its true place the admirable episode ofthe omnibus, and be willing

to find in it very simply what is there, to wit, the scarcely allegorical

picture of a society in which the privileged, comfortably seated,

refuse to move closer together so as to make room for the new arrival.

And-be it said in passing-who welcomes the child who has been

callously rejected? The people! Represented here by the ragpicker.

Baudelaire's ragpicker:

Paying no heed to the spies of the cops, his thralls,

He pours his heart out in stupendous schemes.

He takes great oaths and dictates sublime laws,

Casts down the wicked, aids the victims' cause. 13

Then it will be understood, will it not, that the enemy whom

Lautreamont has made the enemy, the cannibalistic, brain-devouring

"Creator," the sadist perched on "a throne made of human excre

ment and gold," the hypocrite, the debauchee, the idler who "eats

the bread ofothers" andwho from time to time is found dead drunk,

"drunk as a bedbug that has swallowed three barrels ofblood during

the night," it will be understood that it is not beyond the clouds that

one must look for that creator, but that we are more likely to find

him in Desfosses's business directory and on some comfortable

executive board!

But let that be.

The moralists can do nothing about it.

Whether one likes it or not, the bourgeoisie, as a class, is condemned

to take responsibility for all the barbarism ofhistory, the tortures of

Ages and the Inquisition, warmongering and the appeal

to the raison d'Etat, racism and slavery, in short everything against

t which it protested in unforgettable terms at the time when, as the ~.. attacking class, it was the incarnation ofhuman progress.


The moralists can do nothing about it. There is a law of

progressive dehumanization in accordance with which henceforth on

the agenda of the bourgeoisie there is-there can be--nothing but violence, corruption, and barbarism.

I almost forgot hatred, lying, conceit.

I almost forgot M. Roger Caillois.14

Well then: M. Caillois, who from time immemorial has been given

the mission to teach a laxand slipshod age rigorous thought and dignified

style, M. Caillois, therefore, has just been moved to mighty wrath. Why?

Because of the great betrayal of Western ethnography which,

with a deplorable deterioration ofits sense ofresponsibility, has been

using all its ingenuity of late to cast doubt upon the overall supe

riority ofWestern civilization over the exotic civilizations. Now at last M. Caillois takes the field.

Europe has this capacity for raising up heroic saviors at the most critical moments.

It is unpardonable on our part not to remember M. Massis, who,

around 1927, embarked on a crusade for the defense of the West.

We want to make sure that a better fate is in srore for M. Caillois,

who, in order to defend the same sacred cause, transforms his pen

into a good Toledo dagger.

What did M. Massis say? He deplored the fact that "the destiny

ofWestern civilization, and indeed the destiny of man," were now

threatened; that an attempt was being made on all sides "to appeal

t~ our anxieties, to challenge the daims made for our culture, to call

into question the most essential part of what we possess," and he

swore to make war upon these "disastrous prophets."

M. Caillois identifies the enemy no differently. It is those

"European intellectuals" who for the last fifty years, "because of

AlME CESAIRE 69

exceptionally sharp disappointment and bitterness," have relent

lessly "repudiated the various ideals of their culture," and who by

so doing maintain, "especially in Europe, a tenacious malaise."

It is this malaise, this anxiety, which M. Caillois, for his part,

d 15means to put to an en .

And indeed, no personage since the Englishman ofthe Victorian

age has ever surveyed history with a conscience more serene and less

clouded with doubt.

His doctrine? It has the virtue ofsimplicity.

That the West invented science. That the West alone knows how

to think; that at the borders of the Western world there begins the

shadowy realm ofprimitive thinking, which, dominated by the notion

ofparticipation, incapable oflogic, is the very model offaultythinking.

At this point one gives a start. One reminds M. Caillois that the

famous law ofparticipation invented by Levy-Bruhl was repudiated

by Levy-Bruhl himself; that in the evening ofhis life he proclaimed

to the world that he had been wrong in "trying to define a charac

teristic, that was peculiar to the primitive mentality so far as logic

was concerned"; that, on the contrary, he had become convinced

that "these minds do not differ from ours at all from the point of

view of logic.... Therefore, [that they] cannot tolerate a formal

contradiction any more than we can .... Therefore, [that they] reject

as we do, by a kind of mental reflex, that which is logically . 'bl ,,16Impossl e.I

I A waste of time! M. Caillois considers the rectification to be

and void. For M. Caillois, the true Levy-Bruhl can only be the f Levy-Bruhl who says that primitive man talks raving nonsense. ·f

f

t Ofcourse, there remain a few small facts that resist this doctrine.

To wit, the invention ofarithmetic and geometry by the Egyptians.

To wit, the discovery of astronomy by the Assyrians. To wit, the

I I'


of chemistry among the Arabs. To wit, the appearance of

rationalism in Islam at a time when Western thought had a furiously pre-logical cast to it. But M. Caillois soon puts these impertinent

details in their place, since it is a strict principle that "a discovery which does not fit into a whole" is, precisely, only a detail, that is

to say, a negligible nothing. As you can imagine, once to such a good start, M. Caillois

doesn't stop half way.

Having annexed science, he's going to claim ethics too.

Just think of it! M. Caillois has never eaten anyone! M. Caillois

has never dreamed offinishing off an invalid! It has never occurred to M. Caillois to shorten the days ofhis aged parents! Well, there you

have it, the superiority of the West: "That discipline of

tries to ensure that the human person is sufficiently respected so that it is not considered normal to eliminate the old and the infirm."

The conclusion is inescapable: compared to the cannibals, the

dismemberers, and other lesser breeds, Europe and the West are the incarnation of respect for human dignity.

But let us move on, and quickly, lest our thoughts wander to Algiers, Morocco, and other places where, as I write these very

words, so many valiant sons of the West, in the semi-darkness of

dungeons, are lavishing upon their inferior Mrican brothers, with such tireless attention, those authentic marks of respect for human

dignity which are called, in technical terms, "electricity," "the bathtub," and "the bottleneck."

Let us press on: M. Caillois has not yet reached the end of his

of outstanding achievements. After scientific superiority and

moral superiority comes religious superiority. Here, M. Caillois is careful not to let himself be deceived by the

empty prestige ofthe Orient. mother ofgods, perhaps. Anyway,

AIME CESAJRE 71

Europe, mistress of rites. And see how wonderful it is: on the one

hand--outside ofEurope --ceremonies ofthe voodoo type, with all their "ludicrous masquerade, their collective frenzy, their wild alcoholism, their crude exploitation of a naIve fervor," and on the

other hand-in Europe-those authentic values which Chateaubri

and was already celebrating in his Genie du christianisme: 'The

dogmas and mysteries of the Catholic religion, its liturgy, the

symbolism of its sculptors and the glory of the plainsong." Lastly, a final cause for satisfaction:

Gobineau said: "The only history is white." M. Caillois, in turn,

observes: "The only ethnography is white." It is the West that studies the ethnography of the others, not the others who study the

ethnography of the West. A cause for the greatest jubilation, is it not? And the museums ofwhich M. Caillois is so proud, not for one

does it cross his mind that, all things considered, it would

have been better not to needed them; that Europe would have done better to tolerate the non-European civilizations at its side,

leaving them alive, dynamic and prosperous, whole and not mutilated; that it would have better to let them develop and themselves than to present for our admiration, duly labelled,

dead and scattered parts; that anyway, the museum by itself is nothing; that it means nothing, that it can say nothing, when smug

self-satisfaction rots the eyes, when a secret contempt for others

withers the heart, when racism, admitted or not, dries up sympathy; that it means nothing if its only purpose is to feed the delights of

vanity; that after all, the honest contemporary of Saint Louis, who

fought Islam but respected it, had a better chance ofknowing it than do our contemporaries (even if they have a smattering of ethno

graphic literature), who despise it.


No, in the scales ofknowledge all the museums in the

never weigh so much as one spark of human sympathy. And what is the conclusion of all that?

Let us be fair; M. Caillois is moderate.

Having established the superiority of the West in all fields, and having thus re-established a wholesome and extremely valuable

hierarchy, M. Caillois gives immediate proof of this superiority by

concluding that no one should be exterminated. With him the Negroes are sure that they will not be lynched; the Jews, that they

will not feed new bonfires. There is just one thing: it is important

for it to be clearly understood that the Negroes, Jews, and Australians owe this tolerance not to their respective but to

magnanimity of M. Caillois; not to the dictates of science, which

can offer only ephemeral truths, but to a decree of M. Caillois's conscience, which can only be absolute; that this tolerance has no

conditions, no guarantees, unless it be M. Caillois's sense ofhis duty

to himself Perhaps science will one day declare that the backward cultures

and retarded peoples which constitute so many dead weights and

impedimenta on humanity's path must be cleared away, but we are assured that at the critical moment the conscience M. Caillois,

transformed on the spot from a clear conscience into a noble conscience, will arrest the executioner's arm and pronounce

salvus sis. To which we are indebted for the following juicy note:

For me, the question of the equality of races, peoples, or cultures

has meaning only if we are talking about an equality in law, not an

equality in fuct. In the same way, men who are blind, maimed, sick,

feeble-minded, ignorant, or poor (one could hardly be nicer to the

are not respectively equal, in the material sense of

z'it t"tRI'l00mr N'C"- ?

AIME CESAIRE 73

the word, to those who are strong, dear-sighted, whole, healthy,

intelligent, cultured, or rich. The latter have greater capacities which,

the way, do not give them more rights but only more duties ....

Similarly, whether for biological or historical reasons, there exist at

present differences in level, power, and value among the various

cultures. These differences entail an inequality in fact. They in no

way justify an inequality of rights in favor of the so-called superior

peoples, as racism would have it. Rather, they confer upon them

additional tasks and an increased responsibility.

Additional tasks? What are they, ifnot the tasks ofruling the world? Increased responsibility? What is it, if not responsibility for

the world?

And Caillois-Aclas charitably plants his feet firmly in the dust

and once again raises to his stutdy shoulders the inevitable white man's burden.

The reader must excuse me for having talked about M. Caillois at such length. It is not that I overestimate to any degree whatever

the intrinsic value of his "philosophy" reader will have been

able to judge how seriously one should take a thinker who, while claiming to be dedicated to rigorous logic, sacrifices so willingly to

prejudice and wallows so voluptuously in cliches. But his views are

worth special attention because they are significant. Significant of what?

Ofthe state ofmind ofthousands upon thousands ofEuropeans or, to be very precise, of the state of mind of the Western petty

bourgeoisie. Significant ofwhat?

Of this: that at the very time when it most often mouths the 1 word, the West has never been further from being able to live a true ~i~

humanism-a humanism made to the measute of the world.

One of the values invented by the bourgeoisie in former times

and launched throughout the world was man-and we have seen

what has become of that. The other was the nation.

It is a fact: the nation is a bourgeois phenomenon. Exactly; but if I turn my attention from man ro nations, I note

that here too there is great danger; that colonial enterprise is to the

modern world what Roman imperialism was to the ancient world:

the prelude to Disaster and the forerunner of Catastrophe. Come,

now! The Indians massacred, the Moslem world drained of itself,

the Chinese world defiled and perverted for a good century; the

Negro world disqualified; mighty voices stilled forever; homes

scattered to the wind; all this wreckage, all this waste, humanity

reduced to a monologue, and you think all that does not have its I price? The truth is that this policy cannot but bring about the ruin of

74

AIME CESAIRE 75

Europe itself, and that Europe, if it is not careful, will perish from

the void it has created around itself.

They thought they were only slaughtering Indians, or Hindus,

or South Sea Islanders, or Mricans. They have in fact overthrown,

one after another, the ramparts behind which European civilization

could have developed freely.

I know how fallacious historical parallels are, particularly the one

I am about to draw. Nevertheless, permit me to quote a page from

Edgar Quinet for the not inconsiderable element of truth which it

contains and which is worth pondering.

Here it is:

People ask why barbarism emerged all at once in ancient civilization.

I believe I know the answer. It is surprising that so simple a cause is not

obvious to everyone. The system of ancient civilization was composed of

a certain number of nationalities, of countries which, although they

seemed to be enemies, or were even ignorant of each other, protected,

supported, and guarded one another. When the expanding Roman

Empire undertook to conquer and destroy these groups of nations, the

dazzled sophists thought they saw at the end of this road humaniry

triumphant in Rome. They talked about the uniry of the human spirit;

it was only a dream. It happened that these nationalities were so many

bulwarks protecting Rome itself .... Thus when Rome, in its alleged

triumphal march toward a single civilization, had destroyed, one after

the other, Carthage, Egypt, Greece, Judea,Persia, Dacia, and Cisalpine

and Transalpine Gaul, it came to pass that it had itself swallowed up the

dikes that protected it against the human ocean under which it was to

perish. The magnanimous Caesar, by crushing the two Gauls, only paved

the way for the Teutons. So many societies, so many languages extin

guished, so many cities, rights, homes annihilated, created a void around

Rome, and in those places which were not invaded by the barbarians,

barbarism was born spontaneously. The vanquished Gauls changed into

Bagaudes. Thus the violent downfall, the progressive extirpation of


individual cities, caused the crumbling ofancient civilization. That social

edifice was supported by the various nationalities as by so many different

columns of marble or porphyry. When, to the applause of the wise men of the time, each of these

living columns had been demolished, the edifice carne

and the wise men of our day are still trying to understand how such

mighty ruins could have been made in a moment's time.

And now I what else has bourgeois Europe done? It has

undermined civilizations, destroyed countries, ruined nationalities,

extirpated "the root ofdiversity." No more dikes, no more bulwarks.

of the barbarian is at hand. The modern barbarian. The

American hour. Violence, excess, waste, mercantilism, bluff, con

formism, stupidity, vulgarity, disorder.

In 1913, Ambassador Page wrote to Wilson: "The future of the world belongs to us.... Now what are we

going to do with the leadership ofthe world presently when it clearly

falls into our hands?" And in 1914: "What are we going to do with this England and

this Empire, presently, when economic forces unmistakably put the

leadership of the race in our hands?"

This Empire ... And the others ... And indeed, do you not see how ostentatiously these gentlemen

have just unfurled the banner ofanti-colonialism?

"Aid to the disinherited countries, "says Truman. "The time ofthe

old colonialism has passed." That's also Truman. Which means that American high finance considers that the time

has come to raid evety colony in the world. So, dear friends, here

you have to be careful! I know that some of you, disgusted with Europe, with all that

hideous mess which you did not witness by choice, are turning--oh!

AIME CESAIRE 77

in no great numbers-toward America and getting used to looking

country as a possible liberator.

"What a godsend!" you think.

"The bulldozers! The massive investments ofcapital! The toads!

The ports!"

"But American racism!"

"So what? European racism in the colonies has inured us to it!" And there we are, ready to run the great Yankee risk.

So, once again, be careful!

American domination-the only domination from which one

never recovers. I mean from which one never recovers unscarred.

And since you are talking about factories and industries, do you

not see the tremendous factory hysterically spitting out its cinders

in the heart of our forests or deep in the bush, the factory

production oflackeys; do you not see the prodigious mechanization,

the mechanization ofman; the gigantic rape ofeverything intimate,

undamaged, undefiled that, despoiled as we are, our human spirit

has still managed to the machine, yes, have you never seen

machine for crushing, for grinding, for degrading peoples?

So that the danger is immense.

So that unless, in Mrica, in the South Sea Islands, in Madagascar

(that is, at the gates ofSouth Mrica), in the West Indies (that is, at

the gates of America), Western Europe undertakes on its own

initiative a policy of nationalities, a new policy founded on respect

for peoples and cultures-nay, more--unless Europe galvanizes the

dying cultures or raises up new ones, unless it becomes the awakener

of countries and civilizations (this being said without taking into

account the admirable resistance of the colonial peoples primarily I symbolized at present by Vietnam, but also by the Mrica of theI

~. Rassemblement Democratique Mricain), Europe will have deprived

Ii.


itselfof its last chance and, with its own hands, drawn up over itself

the pall of mortal darkness.

Which comes down to saying that the salvation ofEurope is not

a matter of a revolution in methods. It is a matter of the Revolu

tion-the one which, until such time as there is a classless society,

will substitute for the narrow tyranny ofa dehumanized bourgeoisie

the preponderance ofthe only class that still has a universal mission,

because it suffers in its flesh from all the wrongs ofhistory, from all

the universal wrongs: the proletariat.

AN INTERVIEW WITH AIME CESAIRE

Conducted by Rene Depestre

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